“Even the other partners ask me, ‘How can I categorise you as a designer?’”: Yuri Suzuki joins Pentagram

Sound, experience and installation designer Yuri Suzuki is set to join Pentagram’s London office as a new partner. The announcement today comes just weeks after it was revealed that Astrid Stavro, the founder of design studio Atlas, was to become the third designer this year to join the partnership. Clearly, Pentagram is in a hurry to bring new blood on-board in order to help shape the future of the world’s largest independently-owned design studio.

Yet, even against that backdrop, Yuri’s appointment somehow feels special. So much so that even he was taken aback when Pentagram’s Daniel Weil first suggested he make the move around two years ago. “My practice is super difficult to categorise. Compared to product designers and graphic designers, what I’m doing is really abstract and experimental,” Yuri tells It’s Nice That. “My understanding of Pentagram, in the beginning, was that it was a really solid, traditional branding and graphics agency. So I was quite confused by why they were asking me to join.”

He quickly understood why they were asking him, though. “Normally a traditional company gets more conservative and just sticks to one direction, but they’re happy to do something risky and open up new fields within design,” he says. With characteristic humility, “risky” is a word Yuri uses relatively often to describe Pentagram’s move to approach him. For him, that comes down to the relative youth of the field: “There’s no straight way to do business in this way, because there’s no format to do an experience-based or sound-design project. It’s such a new field. So in terms of how quickly I can come in and bring in business, I’m a bit risky – but at the same time, I’m investigating a new kind of field, which is always good.”

Yuri Suzuki: Sonic Playground

Yuri Suzuki: Sonic Playground

And there’s the rub. Pentagram has no doubt spotted the enormous potential for the emerging fields of sound and experience design. Speaking about Yuri’s appointment, Daniel Weil – whom Yuri himself describes as a “mentor” – says, “His work points to a future where design connects to all aspects of how we experience the world around us.”

For Yuri, the potential, particularly for sound design – a field he’s been advocating since he delivered his Nicer Tuesdays talk back in 2016 – is becoming clearer by the day. He points to new industries such as electric cars: “An electric car has no sound – no engine noise, no indicator sounds. So basically an internal team or a sound designer has to work out what the new sound identity of the car will be.” He then mentions connected devices, or Internet of Things devices, which are slowly populating sideboards and kitchen work surfaces around the world. “If you look at Google Home and [Amazon’s] Alexa, these are purely focused on communication through voice rather than text,” he says. “The audible-communication field is going to be really expanding now and I think slowly most companies will realise the importance of communicating through sound.”

The other thing to note is that although he calls the move “risky”, Yuri has produced some breath-taking and ground-breaking work in the short ten years since he graduated from the Design Products course at the Royal College of Art. Earlier this year, for instance, he unveiled an interactive installation in Atlanta that he named Sonic Playground, which consisted of six colourful sculptures that swallow, warp and echo sounds. In 2014 he worked with musician will.i.am to produce a series of pyramid-shaped mechanical instruments called Pyramidi. For the 2016 edition of Design Miami, he created an installation of mechanical bells that were controlled by gesture, called Sharevari. And he has also worked with Google to create a music-based augmented-reality android app that turns simple pieces of card into musical instruments.

So perhaps “risky” is a tiny bit harsh. In spite of his tendency towards self-deprecation, even Yuri acknowledges his contribution to modern art and design: “I’m really confident with what I’ve done over the past ten years and slowly many companies are being convinced that they want to do my kind of design.”

Yuri Suzuki: Pyramidi

Yuri Suzuki: Pyramidi

What’s interesting looking back is that the path of his career could have been very different. He graduated in 2008, right as the global financial crisis unravelled. As he approached graduation, he had three open job offers, but by the time he’d received his certificate all three had disappeared. So he decided to strike out on his own with his solo studio. “These jobs were as ‘design manager’ or as ‘creative technologist’ at big companies,” he explains. “Extremely narrow jobs – they can be really rewarding but I can’t imagine I’d have been able to do as many things as I’ve been able to do on my own. Maybe I was lucky that those three job offers disappeared!”

What Yuri has managed to create since then is a studio and a body of work that span fields and disciplines, and that push at the boundaries between art and science and design. “I get asked a lot, even by the other partners, ‘How can I categorise you as a designer?’ I guess you can say sound designer but sound design often comes down to a piano composition and [my work] is not about that. And I do installation design as well. So maybe experience designer, rather than sound designer is better.” It’s this difficult-to-pin-down approach that makes him such an intriguing and tantalising proposition as a Pentagram partner.

And despite the huge potential of the emerging field of sound design, Yuri’s first brief as a Pentagram partner is perhaps one of the smallest he’s been asked to fulfil for quite some years. “They have asked me to design a new waiting tone sound for their phones,” he says, with an amused smile, “which is actually quite a good first brief.”

More like this:

“I love interaction design because it’s all about defining the rules and the results are unexpected and fluid,” explains designer and developer Yehwan Song. Originally from Seoul, Yehwan is now based in New York City and creates websites and interactive pieces which flip our understanding of web design, concealing visual tricks and riddles in everything she makes.

In 2016, Cyril Martin, Marvin Morisse Maclean and Victor Meunier started Uncanny Valley Studio as a place to combine not only their skills but their love of electronic music, visual arts and creative usages of new technologies. Exploring the relatively new practices of interactive art and interaction design, the trio began working with a medium where the “grammar” and possibilities were (and still are) unstable and yet to be ascertained. “The appeal is twofold,” the trio tells It’s Nice That, “the field calls for experimentation and dialogue and some of the questions are still a little open-ended.”

“What I like about installations is that, in a way, they are very sympathetic,” states Daan Lucas, managing director at Random Studio. “Most of the time, installations require user interaction – active or reflective. This means that they usually invited dialogue.” Based in Amsterdam, Random Studio is an experience design studio working with brands such as Raf Simons, Chanel, Nike and Louis Vuitton to blur the boundaries between art, design and technology, the physical and the non-physical.

Stine Deja is a Danish multimedia artist who moved to London five years ago to study at the Royal College of Art. Her latest projects, 4K Zen and Cyphoria, are thought-provoking reflections on the relationship between technology and the mind, using videos and interactive installations to engage the viewer.

A new app designed by Barcelona based Studio Clam allows users to learn more about this year’s Serpentine Pavilion, designed by architect BIG. The app has a clear interface that explains the different processes behind the construction of the structure, its operation and relationship with the environment. Users can explore the components that make up the temporary structure, currently installed in London’s Hyde park, and explains the concepts and processes that each piece assembled to create the sculptural pavilion. The app, developed as a personal project by the studio as they are such big fans of the architect, allows users to move around a 3D model of the buildings and focus on aspects of the design, such as the continuous, undulating seating, to find out how they are fundamental to the concept as a whole.

For the past 11 years It’s Nice That’s mission to champion creativity has remained at the core of what we do. The team here are committed to bringing you the best and most inspiring creative work from across the world, organising events that will entertain you, and producing magazines you will cherish for years to come.

Even if, technically speaking, working on illustrations is Antti Kalevi’s job, it seems as if he just can’t stop himself finding things to draw. For Antti, artistic inspiration is everywhere and most commonly found through “travelling, food, music and the fine arts". These moments then filter into his illustrative practice once he photographs his surroundings of simply anything that catches his eye.

2018 marked the 50th anniversary of the original publication of photography focused, Provoke magazine. In November of last year, the independent Tokyo-based bookshop and publisher Nitesha reissued all three magazines of the rare publication into one eye-opening compendium. Portraying post-war Japan and the country’s socioeconomic tribulations of the 1960s unlike any other photographic journal; Provoke established a legendary reputation amongst Japanese photography fans for its historical and aesthetic insight.

John Edmonds is a Brooklyn-based photographer whose tender imagery and portraiture hones in on the “performative gestures and self-fashioning of young black men on the streets of America”. With a significant body of work exploring themes of identity, community and desire, John’s first monograph titled Higher brings together four series made between 2011 and 2018.

Hello and welcome to what is traditionally regarded as the most depressing day of the year. Isn’t that a simultaneously bleak and comforting prospect? Today might be hell but look, in a few hours it’s all over and the rest of 2019 will be an absolute breeze.

Mention Final Fantasy in conversation and you’ll notice it often creates a sudden pause. A former player will tend to become misty-eyed as they relive joyful hours spent plonked in front of the telly, engulfed in a role-playing game that changed teenage lives and the face of video gaming. The seventh edition of Final Fantasy, released in 1997 ten years after the first iteration, causes this reaction more than any other game of its ilk. Final Fantasy VII was in fact so seminal that at the beginning of 2017 it warranted a 27,000-word essay by Polygon’s features editor Matt Leone titled 500 Years Later: An Oral History of Final Fantasy VII. Just a few days after it was published online, the plans to reimagine Matt’s essay as a book had already begun.

“I used to think we lived in a styleless age,” says the New York-based illustrator Tug Rice. “Early on, my illustrations tried to infuse some glamour into the world I saw… But now, I’ve come to appreciate the beauty and sophistication of this decade.” Tug’s theatrically-realistic style of illustration is less and less seen in contemporary illustration circles, but its elegance and fluidity continue to beguile clients, making his kind of illustration highly commissionable despite its more traditional roots.

Scottish-born, London-based designer Caterina Bianchini joined us at December’s Nicer Tuesdays at the tail end of last year, taking us through the process behind her work which filtered into See You At The Dance, a recent book compiling her poster work.

This week’s Friday Mixtape comes from not just one It’s Nice That illustration favourite, but two! While at After School Club in Offenbach during the summer of last year, we had a beer with resident illustrators Jan Buchczik and Timo Lenzen who told us about their love of music, often listening together in their shared studio.

London-based design and art direction studio B.A.M recently started work on its identity for White Cube gallery, with an unusual aim: “I have a strong view that an identity, especially for White Cube, should be invisible,” co-founder of the studio David McKendrick tells It’s Nice That. Across its galleries the White Cube houses impeccable artworks and B.A.M quickly identified this as a focal point. In turn, the studio didn’t want to design an identity which would draw eyes away from the likes of Gilbert and George or Tracey Emin, but instead, build the graphic design foundations which would house the artworks, and enhance them too.

There’s a new VR game coming out at the end of this month, and it’s sure to give Beat Saber a run for its money. The brainchild of renowned games designer Sos Sosowski, Mosh Pit Simulator was actually created by accident two years ago when Sos was playing around with simple AI algorithms to programme human models. This serendipitous discovery informs the basis of Mosh Pit Sumlator, whose characters, called “zombies”, flip-flop around in jerky movement according to the code: “if chest is below 1m, bump chest up”. The premise for Mosh Pit Simulator centres around these manic, “brainless, boneless humanoid creatures” in this highly anticipated, albeit slightly mad, new game.

“I wouldn’t call this a book about fashion. Some men talk about fashion, many simply talk about clothes; there’s a distinction,” explains Eliot Haworth, on the new release from the makers of Fantastic Man: What Men Wear. An anthology of Fantastic Man’s online feature Questionnaire which instigates conversations from one question – “What garment is key to your personal style?” – the publication brings together a selection of insightful figures to create an oral history of male dressing in the 21st Century.

Currently showing at the Museum of the City of New York, a unique exhibition is filling the walls of the galleries. Titled Interior Lives: Contemporary Photographs of Chinese New Yorkers, this exhibition provides an unseen glimpse into the lives of the largest ethnic Chinese population outside of Asia.

Illustrator Isabella Cotier’s work has an expressive energy to it that can only really be achieved when you’re working from life. Her depictions of characters observed as they go about their daily lives are funny, vivid, loose and immediate; capturing moments without necessarily being literal.

While on a solo trip through the Argentinian Lake District photographer Alice Zoo chanced across a travelling circus setting up its stage. Both Alice and the performers seemed to have arrived in town at the same time, as the photographer spotted them putting together a Big Top tent as she walked back to her accommodation one night.

Those of you with a memory for such things will likely be able to recall the last piece of work by filmmaker Jenny Schweitzer we featured on It’s Nice That. Girls in Chess was, as the title suggests, an exploration of the gender gap in the world of competitive American scholastic chess. It was charming, funny, warm – the sort of short film you foist upon friends and family, knowing full well that they’ll love it as much as you did. Now turning her lens towards an open, honest, and at times hilarious account of life in a retirement home nestled on the shore of the Hudson River in the Bronx, New York. We’re almost certain that her latest project, The Blessings of Aging, will garner the same reaction.

In February 2016, London-based publisher and filmmaker Freddie Fraser-Forsyth launched topsafe.tv, a platform to showcase films made without briefs or brand involvement. Through providing this platform, and a resulting collaboration with Stop Play Record, Freddie met a load of people he wouldn’t have otherwise, and received a whole load more cold email submissions from directors. “Through these experiences I learned what the London film industry at grassroots level was like and how difficult it was to make work you love,” he tells us of the decision to start his magazine Next 2 Nothing.

As a visual artist, the pressure to be current and “cool” can weigh you down. Korean born-and-raised, now New York-based illustrator Haleigh Mun tells It’s Nice That about her creative development to embrace her own visual style, whether it’s seen as cutting-edge, or not.

Websites, publications, identities, typefaces – Switzerland-based design studio Omnigroup can do it all. What started out as a loose collaboration between Luke Archer, Leonardo Azzolini, Frederik Mahler-Andersen and Simon Mager, is now a fully-functioning studio working on a variety of projects in the fields of art, design and music.

Scottish filmmaker Duncan Cowles took to the stage at December’s Nicer Tuesdays event. With his deadpan humour in tow, Duncan talked us through his collection of films so far, from the infamous The Lady with the Lamp made while he was studying at Edinburgh College of Art, to his more recent Taking Stock for Channel 4’s Random Acts and It’s Not Amazing Enough for TED.

This Winter It’s Nice That is partnering with Adobe Stock on a series of articles that celebrate their collection of millions of high-quality images, graphics, video motion graphics, templates, and branding materials. This also includes a large collection of logo and identify motifs and illustrations designers can utilise during the research of a project.

Los Angeles: songs, sagas and whole industries have been built within the city. It’s no mean feat to document the self-proclaimed “city of angels” through the landscapes of two-dimensional print, but graphic designer Stefanie Tam achieves this in the form of three books centred around a personal love letter to the city.

London-based photographer Ronan McKenzie was our second speaker at December’s Nicer Tuesdays, taking the audience through her portfolio of work to date, honing in on a recent exhibition she put on, I’m Home in October 2018.

“When I draw, I like to think about the nature and structure of each line. How the concepts and ideas are hidden in their own morphology. And how the metaphors and the allegories are created with it,” says Rotterdam-based artist José Quintanar AKA José Ja Ja Ja. Working across narrative drawings, illustration and books, José’s practice sees him exploring the possibilities of drawing as a tool, and his work has been published by The New York Times, Vice, Esquire and many more.

Graphic design studio Arc specialises in printed matter but, occasionally, drifts over into the realms of web and exhibition design. Founded by Joachim Bartsch, Timo Grimberg and Toni Schönbuchner, the Berlin-based studio has an impressive turnover of projects; paying homage to the Swiss school of design with their typography-centred layouts.

Regular Practice is a London-based design studio comprising of Tom Finn and Kristoffer Soelling. Having met at the Royal College of Art, the duo has produced project after project with beautiful graphics – and sound concepts to back them up. Including a self-populating work for the identity of their previous college, and an architectural journal for the University of Puerto Rico, a constant across the duo’s portfolio is microscopic attention to experimental type and printing techniques.

Previous to completing her master’s degree at the Royal College of Art, artist Viviana Troya studied fine art in her native country of Colombia. Having graduated last year, Viviana is now exhibiting as part of the Bloomberg New Contemporaries at Peckham’s South London Gallery, showing her latest work Hatchery until 24 February this year.

For photographer Maximilian Virgili, travel opens up possibilities for his work. Settling in the medium as a documentary, travel-focused photographer, his discovery of this niche was largely “because whenever I travelled I had time to really focus on my work,” he tells It’s Nice That. This time spent in another part of the world melted away any worries the photographer had; he felt confident to try new ideas and the processing of the photographs would happen when he returned home. It gave him the room to do what photographers do best: take pictures.

London-based creative agency Anyways, a sister company to It’s Nice That and part of the HudsonBec Group, always approaches projects by looking for meaningful ways to display creativity. One of the agency’s most recent projects is two animated shorts for workspace company Fora, announcing its new locations in Soho and Spitalfields. The animations may differ in location and animator, but the historical context and vibrant communities of each area are at the heart of Anyways’ art direction.

Joining us from Germany for the last Nicer Tuesdays talk of 2018 was the renowned illustrator, Christoph Niemann. An illustrator celebrated for his endlessly-brilliant portfolio of books and spot illustrations for publications, Christoph joined us to talk through a larger project: a mural.

Agnieszka Chabros is a fine art photographer and casting director based in Melbourne. With an impressive roster of clients that includes Novembre, i-D and Vice UK, this highly-commissionable photographer was recently employed by Vogue Italia to photograph a series called Cowboys for the famous fashion magazine.

“The most exciting aspect of illustration, I think, is that there are so many different directions to take it,” states New York-born, Germany-based illustrator Haley Tippmann, “there are so many different perspectives and ways of drawing an idea or a feeling, that it feels limitless.” An observational drawer, Haley’s work sees her filling each frame with crowds of strangers, projecting narratives onto their mundane interactions, all in her signature, over exaggerated style.

The Taiwanese art director and designer Chen-Huang Chian has released a new publication Miner Volume 1 in aid of “the artists’ love for creation.” The magazine is published by Cave Records, and in each issue, creatives from a variety of disciplines are invited to create work around theme-based issues. The first issue explores the concept of “self-shaping through sampling shapes and symbols in modern society and social media.” Geometric shapes of dense orange are sporadically peppered throughout the highly stylised spreads; contrasting hyper-real photography with blocky graphics, and there’s even a Mickey Mouse dot-to-dot thrown in there!

The Guajira province of Colombia lies to the north of the country. A desert landscape, it’s bordered by Venezuela and is home to the Wayuu people. It’s an area where trafficking has historically taken roots; from drugs to humans, but also liquor and in recent times, gasoline, largely in part to Venezuela’s heavily subsidised fuel prices in comparison to the highly taxed Colombian ones. As a result, men, women and children fill makeshift containers called pimpinas – plastic bottles, water gallons and whatever they can get their hands on – with fuel to smuggle across the border in cars with modified tanks, designed to carry more than a regular tank would. These people are known as the Pimpineros, and they are the subject of photographer José Castrellón’s latest documentary series.

The Berlin-based design studio, Studio Lindhorst-Emme, continues to deliver well-informed design with an attention to detail. In a recent project, the studio designed the visual identity for the exhibition Das Kapital ist weg – Wir sind das Kapital! in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Until its closure a few years ago, the exhibition’s venue was home to Joseph Bueys’ iconic artwork Das Kapital, and the new exhibition aims to maintain the artwork’s democratic intentions that realised a new definition of “capital” beyond its monetary value, instead focusing on human creativity at the centre of economic thought.

Few photographers present such a consistent portfolio than that of Paris-based Betina Du Toit. Bouncing between studio shots and landscapes, Betina’s images capture a variety of ethereal women. Tones of blue, green, brown and orange provide visual succinctness to her work, locking her subjects in what appears to be never-ending autumn. Groups of girls lounge beneath trees or plunge themselves in rivers but no matter what the location; Betina draws out a natural and effortless beauty in each of her subjects, tying them to their surroundings.

We use cookies on this website to analyse your use of our products and services, provide content from third parties and assist with our marketing efforts. Learn more about our use of cookies and available controls: cookie policy. Please be aware that your experience may be disrupted until you accept cookies.